do something I've never done before

Dancing in a restaurant in Greece with my friends! It was Fun and something that I’d normally never do. Aah memories…precious little things.

I’ve always loved climbing trees, but today I climbed trees on a level hitherto unmatched. I was visiting a local protest camp in a beautiful ancient Sussex woodland. There were many very well- crafted treehouses scattered through the canopies of many fine trees.

One in particular: a magnificent old oak, dressed in brilliant-green spring leaves and gnarling resolutely into the cloudless April blue.

My epic journey sent me up several metres where I squeezed through a small hole into a room built around the trunk. In the corner of this unusual arrangement was a bedframe which was supporting one side of the room and which made a convenient ladder with which to climb out through another small hole in the roof of the room.

When on the roof further negotiation of twisting branches was required to reach a rather comfy and welcome sofa- nailed securely in place and complete with coffee table and ashtray. This about 4 storeys up now, looking out through a hole in the trees onto a plush meadow of long grass and grazing sheep.

Climbing higher right above the sofa led to a nice vantage and two ropes, one for the feet, one the hands, which led up and across some 15 metres to the top of a tall thin ash. Up a few metres further was a small lookout platform, onto which was tied one corner of a large blue ropenet, the other corners fastened to other nearby trees. Although secure, it took a moment to find the guts to dive into it but when I did, when I was sprawled face down in it, gazing at the distant Earth, Sun on my head, I had a peaceful moment of peaceful moments.

Crawling to the other side of the hammock I scrambled off and onto a very thin tree with little room for movement where I could access more ropes to scale across the canopy again to another thin tree, climb down a way and find another bridge leading back to the top of the original oak.

Along the way I saw bathtubs suspended from branches; dartboards 50 foot high and bicycles hiding in leaves. I saw a peaceful, sustainable, comfortable, responsible way of living. I thought I was seeing the past but it might have been the future.

Just remembered another one: I’m talking to my friend about things we’ve never done before and she mentions: drinking while urinating (so as to create a current of water encircling the body).

I racked my brains and decided that no, I’d never done this before so I promptly arose to the bog whereby I began to chug on a glass of water and gently urinate down the pan.

It felt good to do this for the first time; apart from that, it was…ok.

Ok so first on my list of things I’ve done that I’ve never done before is this: ride on a bicycle made for two.

It was really quite cosmic. I was walking home in the rain, soaked and wishing I’d brought my bike when I heard a funny echo coming out of my headphones. When I took them off to investigate, imagine my surprise when the tune I was just listening to (Outer Space by The Uppsetters) was still playing!

Up ahead was the Critical Mass bike ride posse gathering to set off for a mozey around town. Now I’d planned days ago to join them for this but had clean forgotten; and here they were, including a guy with his rather funky tandem, sound system rigged to a trailer, blaring out the exact same tune I’d just been singing, and a rider short.

Course, I obliged and not only did I get a lift home but I managed to parade the streets first with 20 others generally getting in the way of taxi drivers and distracting the public.

AND I did something I’ve never done before.

It was great. Tandems are pretty easy to negotiate but you need to communicate with each other. (e.g. Stop!) You also get a lot of smiles. I only got to have the rear seat though but it was nice not having to watch the road so much)

What was even more spooky was that the tandem then played 2 other songs that I’d been playing on my mp3 player earlier in the journey! That’s never happened before either.

At least once a year on my birthday but preferably much more often.

Its hard to classify what counts. For example: At the present moment Im sitting in front of the computer with my feet raised up above the monitor and only one shoe on, while listening to an old recording of William Shatner singing Rocket Man, half-reading a book on identifying trees of the hornbeam family, and wearing a comedy red nose which my goddaughter gave me earlier.

Im pretty sure Ive never done that combination of things before.

I think I’ll try to keep a log here of all the things I do for the first time, for future reference.